New Zealand named sexiest accent in the world
Queen's English was 12th on the list
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The New Zealand accent has been named the sexiest in the world, according to a new survey.
Travel site Big 7 Travel announced the findings Monday after polling 8,500 people from 60 countries across the globe over the last month.
According to the results, those surveyed found the Kiwi accent - spoken by singers Lorde and Keith Urban - the most alluring, ranking it number one out of 50 accents.
“The ‘Newzild’ dialect is outrageously charming,” the travel site wrote of the accent which is spoken across New Zealand. “The sexiest accent in the world? It’s official.”
Following New Zealand were the South African and Irish accents, which placed second and third, respectively.
According to the survey's participants, the Italian accent earned fourth place on the list because “any word in Italian sounds sexy”.
Also included among the top 10 was Australian, Scottish, French, Spanish, Southern US, and Brazilian Portuguese.
While the Scottish accent led the way for Britons and placed sixth with its “rich sounds and harsh vowels”, Queen’s English, the standard English spoken in Britain, wasn’t far behind in 12th thanks to it sounding “clear, clipped and completely posh”.
Liverpool's Scouse accent placed 32nd on the list, with the Geordie accent from Newcastle, which is “notoriously difficult to understand”, according to the travel site, named 41st.
A New Yorker accent, described as “fast and hyper-nasal”, proved to be even less charming, coming in at 44th and just narrowly beating the Welsh accent, which was ranked 45th on the list.
Croatian, which came in last place, was the "least-popular" Slavic accent on the list, but was still found to be sexier than many of the more than 7,000 accents worldwide.
Survey participants were asked to rate their top 10 accents from a shortlist of 100 accents, with the 50-highest scoring accents making up the final published results.
You can find the entire list here.
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